As mentioned by
@furious70 , the 2023 CATL will run to St. Louis.
Because the total distance this year is longer than in all prior CATL drives, those of us doing the whole run will overnight in
Collinsville, IL -- about 15' from downtown St. Louis.
Collinsville is right next to
Horseshoe Lake State Park, which checks the CAT
L (C-bodies At The
Lake) box. For those interested in history, it is home to the
Cahokia Mounds -- a National Historic Landmark that contains the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas north of Mexico (and, as a result, is a National Historic Landmark and one of the 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within the United States). For those interested in trivia, the town has the
world's tallest catsup bottle monument (see below, I sense a great photo-op).
@amazinblue82 will probably suggest that we
fill up at
Lowell's Mobil at 2000 Vandalia Street, which is on the old Route 66 and is a historic building!
Then
and now
For
lodging, the
Comfort Inn in Collinsville is the suggested hotel. I picked the CI in part because of customer ratings and partly because of location: it is immediately next to a
Days Inn (lower-rated but much cheaper, plus it helps collect Wyndham points) and a
Hampton Inn (similarly priced and rated, for folks who want Hilton points). That way, everyone who overnights can be close-by, yet folks are free to stay wherever they prefer and in a way that fits their budgets.
